The last time you went airborne did anybody in your traveling band bleat a note of objection as TSA pit bulls herded you burr-footed through X-ray- scanners? While being kept in line, you might have noticed that there wasn't any law posted explaining why you need to be branded with papers of identification.
Has our Bill of Rights been plunged down a water trough? Right now, there is a man who has the courage (and money) to face up to the wolves with wit that attempt to pull wool over our eyes. His name is John Gilmore and he believes it's important that we the people corral these intrusions into our private lives. See http://www.papersplease.org/gilmore.
Sitting back like docile lambs and doing nothing about evaporating freedoms makes the situation worse and is—as the Ayn Rand argument goes—giving your sanction as victims that it's OK for your rights to be evermore violated.
In dry years, sheep dehydrate while trailed between water sources. Air travelers from the Wild West hopping the Mississippi to lobby Washington government sources over environmental issues are directed not to over-hydrate, since they are not permitted use of restroom facilities for the last 45 minutes of the flight. The longer the holding pattern is, the longer your other holding will be. Rise out of your seat and face time in the pen and maybe a Taser prod. All this in the name of blessed security. Airport kiosks that sell Depends diapers set up next to such departure gates could become quite profitable. Is this one of the freedoms for which "they" hate us?
When Eastern European countries face dubious election results, there is enough public outrage to force recounts by reliable sources. While relaxed on sheepskin sofas some of you may have seen a report on TV that mentioned our own country has voting systems not up to the snuff of Third World nations that we monitor! What's most outrageous is our lack of outrage. How many whips have to come down on our backs before we can't take it anymore? Is it because the culture of TV's passive ways originated from a Rigby, Idaho, farmer's field—just up the trail from where a new flavor of pollution is about to be produced? Before television ever aired, there was no study done to see how it would affect and placate the masses.
People often let themselves become lazy when fattened up by prosperity. Witness the budding industry of psychologists specializing in counseling financially wealthy people helplessly gated in by their silver and gold. It could be that many would become couch placatoes, whether or not Fox news and cartoon channels were available. There are plenty of other systems devised to make most of us dependent on the state—each manufactured with it's own cursed trap-latch: car payments fueling gridlock anger. (When are those dang sheep going to finish crossing the road?) Strings pulling loose from grass grazing lawnmowers. Poisons that chemical companies have convinced homeowners need sprayed on edible dandelions. Moreover, manufactured Plutonium-238, to keep campfires burning for spiritual robots on missions for greener pastures in the silver fruit of the Milky Way. Travelers who need no knives aboard for tearing apart muttonchops but rather feed upon 100 percent unnatural radioactive decay aboard spaceships. They are our new sacrificial DOE lambs or did I get that turf backwards out of confusion?
Officials who are not plainspoken would have you believe that chances are as remote as the Great Pyrenees constellation anything bad could happen in the Snake River Plain by the time our plutonium slingshots Pluto. But, when a Geiger counter shows potatoes so hot that they'll fry your thyroid gland, you'll be reaching for grains of super-iodized sea salt. Then you'll wish that more people had spoken up to fund more down to earth solar and oceanographic applications before war machines sucked every drop dry. And I thought chip additives made for wicked spuds.
So, lead us in prayer Mister Dalai Lama, over these troubled waters. Because we're going to need a copper basin full of harmonic convergence with every molecule of magic permanently plugging the dike of in-toxic-crated waste. I hope that none will ever have to dare say that the Emperor's coverings have come loose from his barrels of laughs.
Let us hope that every shepherd hired by the Idaho National Laboratory (where the environment was just dropped out from the name) only has his good side come out during moonless nights when Pluto is visible. That those casks all made in sand never slip into the sea, eventually. For if they do specially suited observers of thenceforth fallow "fallow fields will be left to marvel" at what great mistakes we've made. The shepherd's staple tuber scorned even more than it was over the freedom fries debacle. A bunch of sheep-dip over the same French who gave us Lady Liberty.
Talk is cheap, free speech isn't. Imagine the different look this valley would have today if this newspaper were not such a vigilant warrior guarding the public's best interest from silent predator wagging watchdogs in Ketchum. The free press is a wonderful tool there for you to use. When high white horse souses drunk on power are seen playing games of risk with peoples' lives, you don't always have to be a pawn. Flip over the rule-rigging boards, let your patriotic passions ignite inside you, write your letters of dialogue to the editor and celebrate a freedom for which people should love us.
Jim Banholzer
